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21 Designers Tell the Stories Behind Their Tattoos

From nerdy to sublime

There's a certain amount of pressure on designers when they decide to get tattoos. It's like a hairdresser's hairstyle, or an architect's home—the choices you make seem weightier, more personal somehow, given your background.

Creative Bloq recently asked 21 designers to show off their tattoos, and explain what makes them special. And the designs, and inspirations, are varied and fascinating.

Facebook designer Russ Maschmeyer and freelance letterer and illustrator Jessica Hische got the tattoos above. His is RGB. "I convinced him it would be 'conceptually stronger' if I got the CMYK version of the same tattoo," Hische says. "He was a little freaked out about having a couple's tattoo, but the more we talked about it the more it made sense. Russ got additive color (RGB) since his career passions were primarily screen-based; I got subtractive color (CMY) because I started my career in print design."

Typographer Carey Smith has tattoos of 26 tiny letters. "I didn't start off thinking I'd get the whole alphabet," she says. "I got the first one (j) on a whim, then the next few (g, a, q) without thinking much about it. … It's the most uneconomical way of getting tattooed ever. You pay by the hour, and these little letters take about seven minutes each."